ABOUT THE AUTHOR — Shawn D. Standfast was born in 1966 on an island in Northern Ontario, Canada. His early years were spent without running water, indoor plumbing, and electricity. Shawn began reading to pass the long summer days and cold winter nights. He has fond memories of reading in the silence of the rural countryside and listening to old time radio shows through a crystal radio late at night.

In his teens Shawn moved to Toronto. A high school English class sparked his interest in poetry. A few poets like John Clare, Robert Frost, and Percy Bysshe Shelley became lifelong favourites. Inspired, Shawn began writing poetry and song lyrics. In the late 1980’s Shawn stopped writing.

After relocating to the United Kingdom in 2005, Shawn began writing again and entering poetry contests. For five years running, one of his submissions was chosen for his local library poetry contest until its demise in 2018. Dark Passages is a selection of the poetry he has written while in the UK.

Paths of DarknessMichael Subjack

In his second short story collection, Michael Subjack brings you thirteen new tales of terror. When a desperate car thief steals a strange automobile, he earns the wrath of its dangerous and otherworldly owner. The Devil decides to cut loose on a Saturday night but finds not even he can make things go exactly as planned. A misanthropic dairy farmer’s livestock starts dying and the culprit may be the elusive creature known as the Chupacabra.An old man suffering from constant nightmares finds them taking a sudden and terrifying turn for the worse. A couple going through a difficult time plot to rob a wealthy and eccentric older woman, only to learn she has far more nefarious plans for them.A young girl and her babysitter encounter a bizarre and inexplicable evil while hiking through the woods. Thirteen paths await you. Are you ready to explore the darkness?

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

{Untitled}by Asena Lourenco

The end. What even is the end? Who says that there had to be one?

Never ending, forever looping? The theory is flawed in many ways as saying that there is always an end. But is there an end to the universe? Or not? Could a walk through the hallway keep going forever if the human body had that amount of energy? Scientists say there will have to be an end when the sun blows up and all life on Earth will come to an end, but then what? Other planets and stars still live on, outer space is still alive! The darkness is still alive. It will always be. Sins, dark and hurtful sins will live on, through people, through time, and through places. I will never forget my walk through that hallway, at times it may skip my mind, but it is always there, haunting me for the rest of my life.

The things I have seen cannot be unseen, even if someone was to personally rip out my brain, my eyes still know what they’ve seen, my body still knows what it’s seen, my grave will know what I’ve seen.

Inside were my father
And new stepmother
And their baby child,
Now in shreds all over
The muddy ground.
That very night,
They sent me home

Back to Momma
Where I belong.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Christina Sng:

A Collection of Nightmares

Hold your screams and enter a world of seasonal creatures, dreams of bones, and confessions modeled from open eyes and endless insomnia. Christina Sng’s A Collection of Nightmares is a poetic feast of sleeplessness and shadows, an exquisite exhibition of fear and things better left unsaid. Here are ramblings at the end of the world and a path that leads to a thousand paper cuts at the hands of a skin carver. There are crawlspace whispers, and fresh sheets gently washed with sacrifice and poison, and if you’re careful in this ghost month, these poems will call upon the succubus to tend to your flesh wounds and scars.
These nightmares are sweeping fantasies that electrocute the senses as much as they dull the ache of loneliness by showing you what’s hiding under your bed, in the back of your closet, and inside your head. Sng’s poems dissect and flower, her autopsies are delicate blooms dressed with blood and syntax. Her words are charcoal and cotton, safe yet dressed in an executioner’s garb.
Dream carefully.
You’ve already made your bed.
The nightmares you have now will not be kind.
And you have no one to blame but yourself.

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Earth and Airby Sabrann Curach

In the dark of the forest,
I’ve been running from things,
monsters that nip, and scream, or whisper,
following behind me as I stumble and
trip over roots.
Ragged breath echoes,
they danced around me effortlessly.
The world may have ended behind me,
I’d never know.
There was a threat of the war,
held over us for so long it was a
shadow, a puppet, a silhouette of a parody.
We began to accept it’s hand above us,
some of us even saw it as a protection.
That hand, turned the other way,
could protect us, prevent others.
Insidious really, the monster’s hand,
became an umbrella of peace,
scattered with flowers and dripping blossom.
For some of us.
Not for me.
When it began, I ran. Pulling my own monsters,
behind me, in front of me, around me.
The hand over me was the biggest threat
to us all.
We ran.
I ran into a tree, and suddenly, silence
the howl of wind above me stilled,
the leaves stopped rustling.
And in the depths of the earth, and a mile above
two monsters began to roar,
and everything burned.

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Death Marchby Lydia Prime

Eyes of amber reflected a raging fire. From toe to fingertip the infection bred as black veins trailed through her alabaster form. It’s said that looks can kill, but for her, a single touch was enough. Victims could do nothing but watch as their flesh bubbled and melted from bone. Her skeletal army building to an unfathomable mass, she collected any creature that crossed her path.

Armada in tow, she made her way through the veil and massacred those who stood against her. Fallen enemies lay in her wake as the true target of her death march emerged. Her diseased hands wrapped around his throat with a strength he’d never known. While his fury turned to dread, sinew slowly boiled away. At last, his cry of outrage ceased. Euphoric, she beheld the pitiful carapace of a once fearsome ruler.

The legion of dead drew near and watched in terror as she took her throne. She smirked as her gathered rabble bowed in supplication before her.

Lydia grew up in a small, ‘Mayberry,’ sort of town, in New Jersey. She thoroughly enjoys gummy bears and laughing through the darkest depths of life. More often than not, she writes about demons and monsters, however, being a recovering addict, she likes to turn inner demons into fearsome foes to be fought beyond the constraints of the mind.

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Wrong Turnby Bailey Hunter

I took a wrong turn. Truth be told, I’ve taken a lot of wrong turns in life, but this one… this one has gone so far off the rails.

It started off like every bad decision. A few beers with the guys. An agreement that I knew was best not made. Next thing I know, I’m running down some rank back alley with a small posse pushing me deeper into the dark places only addicts and the invisible lurk.

I should have known it was too good. Timing too perfect. Who trusts a strange dude looking more dead than alive offering an out? This idiot, that’s who. But in my defense, it was the open door he offered as an escape from my pursuers that I desperately needed. I probably would have jumped into an open sewer hatch if it meant I could remain breathing with all limbs intact.

Now the pursuit continues, only it’s not a pack of angry dude-bros after me. It’s the darkness. It’s been chasing me down these stairs for what seems like weeks. I tried going back but there is no back. Just the blackness. No stairs left behind me to climb, only the ones in front of me as the blackness pushes me further down. I don’t know where I’m going to end up. I don’t know if there is even an end. I do know I’m down a whole left hand and a wrist. The blackness took them when I reached into it. Now I just run forward, downward, deeper and deeper into nowhere with nothingness to turn back to.

I’m not sure if it’s hope, fear, or just blind instinct that’s keeping me going. I took a wrong turn, and I’m starting to wonder if an end does exist, that maybe the nothingness is actually a better choice.

Since then, Gavin’s found someone better to occupy his mind and heart. Isolde—in bed, on the couch, in the shower. She has a thing for Disney princesses, but he’s willing to overlook it. Women like her only come around once or twice in five hundred years. He knows.

When Isolde is kidnapped to bait a deathtrap for Gavin, he’s torn between two truths…abandoning Isolde is unthinkable, but rescuing her could mean death for both of them.

Sirens Call Publications

Pen of The Damned

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Horror Writers Association

Nina D’Arcangela

Nina D’Arcangela is a quirky horror writer who likes to spin soul rending snippets of despair. She reads anything from splatter matter to dark matter. She's an UrbEx adventurer who suffers from unquenchable wanderlust. She loves to photograph abandoned places, bits of decay and old graveyards.

Nina is co-owner of Sirens Call Publications, co-founder of the horror writer's group 'Pen of the Damned', and if that isn't enough, put a check mark in the box next to owner and resident nut-job of Dark Angel Photography.